Video: Adjusting Color settings

Color management can be a difficult subject, but fortunately Photoshop Elements attempts to simplify color management so that it's as easy as possible to deal with. I would like to talk for a minute about color management and how it works in Elements. First of all, what is the problem that color management attempts to solve, you have probably had the experience of working with a photo on your computer either in Elements or another digital imaging program and the colors looked great. But when you printed the photo or when you put it up on a website, maybe the colors just didn't look exactly the same as they had when you were working on it on your screen.

Photoshop Elements 7 is packed with features to help amateur photographers with every stage of digital photo processing, from getting organized to sharing projects with family and friends. In Photoshop Elements 7 for Windows Essential Training, Jan Kabili shares workflow techniques for organizing, editing, creating projects, and sharing. She also demonstrates how to enhance photos with this budget-friendly software. Jan explains the latest updates to the Organizer and Editor workspaces, and also covers new features like the Smart Brush tool and Photoshop.com integration. Elements is very well known for its project features, and Jan shows how to create books, collages, panoramas, and more. Example files accompany the course.

Topics include:

Getting photos from a camera, scanner, or files

Organizing and finding photos with tags, albums, and Smart Collections

Adjusting Color settings

Color management can be a difficult subject, but fortunately Photoshop Elementsattempts to simplify color management so that it's as easy as possible to dealwith. I would like to talk for a minute about color management and how it works in Elements.First of all, what is the problem that color management attempts to solve, youhave probably had the experience of working with a photo on your computereither in Elements or another digital imaging program and the colors lookedgreat. But when you printed the photo or when you put it up on a website, maybethe colors just didn't look exactly the same as they had when you were workingon it on your screen.

The reason is that colors are really just numerical values, which have to beinterpreted to become colors that we can see. Every device that you use in yourdigital life has a unique way of translating color values into visible colors.Your camera, your monitor, your printer, your scanner, all interpret colors indifferent ways, so that's the problem.The solution is that manufacturers of these kinds of devices got together andcame up with a system of color management with the goal of trying to createconsistency among colors, so that the colors you see in a photo when you areediting it in Photoshop Elements will look as close as possible to the colorsyou might see when you print that photo or when you upload it to the web orsend to someone by email or you are showing it to other people on a computer screen.

This color management system in a nutshell involves adding tiny pieces ofinformation to every photo. Those pieces of information are called colorprofiles that describe the way you want colors to be interpreted by devices inyou digital workflow.Now, how does Photoshop Elements deal with color management? The first stop inhandling color management in Elements is the Color Settings dialog box. Youwill open that by going in the Editor to the Edit menu at the top of the screenand choosing Color Settings.

It's worth taking the time to read through this narrative to understand thedifferent choices that Elements is offering you. In this dialog box, you willget to choose how you are going to manage color in your images. The firstchoice here, No Color Management, is not the one that I recommend.When you choose No Color Management, then you are allowing Elements to displaycolors in a file using the idiosyncratic way that your particular monitordisplays color and that isn't necessarily the way the colors are going to bedisplayed anywhere else, on anyone else's monitor or in a print.

Also, when you choose No Color Management, there are no color profiles attachedto your photos and so the next device down the line, say your printer, won'tknow how you expect the colors in the photo to be interpreted. The next choice,Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens is a good one, particularly if mostof the photos you are working on you share with other people online.What this does is keeps the colors that you see on screen within the sRGB colorrange as it says here. The sRGB color range reflects the way that most computermonitors display color. So again, if you are creating something for the screenlike a slideshow of your photos or email attachments or photos that you intendto share online, perhaps on Photoshop.com or on a website, then Always OptimizeColors for Computer Screens is the best color settings choice.

However, if you are someone who usually prints their photos on an inkjetprinter say, then the best choice for you is this one, Always Optimize forPrinting. This will display your photos based on the colors in the AdobeRGBcolor space as it says here. The AdobeRGB color space offers the broadest rangeof colors. So, it works quite well for printed images.The last choice allow me to choose, might sound good, but actually it's goingto give you a headache because every time that you open a file that does notcontain a color profile, Elements is going to ask you what you want to do andthat means you constantly have to make a color management choice.

So again, choose either Always Optimize Colors for Computer Screens, if you share photos primarily on the web by email or by showing slideshows from yourcomputer. Choose Always Optimize for Printing if you most often print yourphotos on your desktop inkjet printer and when you are done making that choice,click OK.Now what you see on your screen in Elements is most likely to match the colorsor your output photos. There are two other pieces to color management and thosecome into play when you save an image and when you print an image. We will talkabout those in our lessons on printing and saving in this course.

One more thing, if you really want your color settings to do their job, youhave to calibrate your monitor. That means set it to its standard settings andgenerate a profile for your monitor which describes how your particular monitorinterprets color.The way to do that is to purchase and use a hardware calibrator, which you canbuy from a number of different third party manufacturers. I urge you to dothis, but even if you don't, please do choose the correct color settings foryour favorite output.

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